Obliviate
by the green lama
Summary: More alone than he has ever been, Draco Malfoy finds himself trusting all of his hopes and fears to a muggle he has never met before. But how much will he tell her? And how long can this new friendship last? Long-ish oneshot, pre-DH.


A/N: This is my first attempt at writing with J.K. Rowling's characters: any comments or thoughts would be very, very much appreciated!

**Obliviate**

Draco Malfoy closed the back door quietly behind him, allowing the latch to click slowly and gently. Not that his parents would hear, he thought, casting a dark glance upwards in the direction of their bedroom windows. The curtains were still tightly drawn: it was early yet.

The gardens that now lay before him were bathed in the soft-edged, gold-tinted light of early morning, and birds sang unknowingly among the neat lawns and prim hedges; but, blind to the almost idyllic peace that lay over the scene, he turned his back on it and headed south, past the walled garden and the greenhouses. He walked briskly, keen to be free of the Malfoy land. His feet crunched crisply on the gravel path, and he could almost feel the disapproving glare of the Manor on his back.

Why this feeling of guilt? Why the mien of the fugitive in the gardens of his own home? There was nothing wrong with a morning walk, he reminded himself as he passed under an archway and through the wrought-iron gate that marked the edge of the grounds; and if he was back by the time his parents came down for breakfast, they would never even know that he had been gone. But his pace did not drop even as the gate clanged noisily shut behind him: he could still feel the menacing mood of the house darkening the edge of his vision. He hurried on.

His feet, shod expensively in well-fitting patent leather, carried him away from the boundary hedge and into the wood that separated the house from the nearby village. It had been planted by his ancestors generations ago to shield the Manor from unwanted muggle eyes. It looked perfectly innocent now, however, in the morning light. The birdsong was louder now; the sun-dappled ground was soft and mossy underfoot, and it was pleasingly quiet. This was the sort of quiet in which one could happily doze off and get lost in memories of happier times: it was a world away from his usual world of sharp echoes splitting heavy silences, of the dull sheen of firelight on marble.

He stopped suddenly, breathing heavily. The gate was far behind him, and his heart seemed to lift as the house's chill grip on it was loosened. There were no disapproving eyes here, no chilling whispers at the edge of his consciousness, no monsters hiding under the bridge that crossed the brook. A deep, shuddering sigh escaped from his lips as the weight of fear and expectation lifted slightly from his shoulders. He could not remember the last time he had been truly alone.

"You're from the big house, aren't you?"

He turned instantly on the spot, wand raised. "Who's there?" His voice had a snarling edge to it that was unsettlingly like his father's. His eyes flashed darkly: he was ready to curse the first person he saw.

"Sorry – I didn't mean to frighten you."

Hr froze, poised with his wand in his hand, as his eyes settled on a girl who couldn't be much older than he was: slight and brown-haired, sitting cross legged under a tree by the brook. Muggle, he saw at once.

"What's that?" She was eyeing his wand in mild concern.

"Nothing," he muttered, shoving it awkwardly into his trouser pocket. Immediately, he could almost feel his father's disapproving stare. "And I wasn't frightened," he added harshly.

"All right." An irritating half-smile flickered across her features.

He took a few steps towards her, adopting his most imposing attitude. "What are you doing here?"

"I might ask you the same question."

This threw him for a moment: he was unaccustomed to being challenged and felt strangely out of his depth. "And how do you know where I live?"

"It's obvious, isn't it? There's nowhere else you could have come from."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Her eyes took on a slightly reproachful aspect. "There's no need to be so defensive."

"On the contrary, there is every need. I've absolutely no idea who you are."

"Celia Russell."

He blinked stupidly: this was not what he had expected. "What?"

"I'm Celia. I live in the village, just off the high street." Still seated on the ground, she held out a hand which he regarded dubiously. Surely she didn't actually expect him to shake it. "It doesn't hurt, you know, to be friendly." Her voice had dropped a tone, had softened slightly, and prompted him to meet her wide, shyly inquisitive eyes.

He could almost hear his father's voice in his ear. "Come, Draco," he would drawl with his familiar sneer, the slightly rising intonation hinting at the depths of his disappointment in his son's increasingly poor judgement. A flash of hatred surged through him suddenly: his hand jerked forwards, clasped that of the muggle girl and shook it firmly. He didn't withdraw it at once, though, savouring the small but inestimably significant act of rebellion. He had been moved to it without warning, yet it had not been completely unexpected.

Celia watched him somewhat guardedly as he withdrew his hand at length, but if she was alarmed or confused, she didn't show it. "Right." She lowered her eyes, as if wondering where to go from here. He supposed that he had better return the gesture and introduce himself.

"I'm Draco Malfoy."

"It's nice to meet you, Draco."

His eyebrows raised in mild surprise. "Is it?"

Her eyes darted up sharply. She looked set to make the sort of cutting, dismissive remark to which he was accustomed – and who could have blamed her? She probably thought he was a complete fruitcake. But her next words caught him off-guard.

"Are you all right?" she asked hesitantly. He met her eyes and felt a small pang of he knew not what as he recognised the concern in them.

"Me?" No one had ever spoken to him like this – not that he could remember. No one had ever needed to, or been given a chance to before coming to know him as the self-assured, arrogant little toe-rag that he was.

"Yes, you."

"I'm... fine."

She watched him for a moment longer, then gestured towards the mossy patch of ground beside her. "You can sit down, if you like."

Her words warmed a long-forgotten, long-neglected corner of his dark little heart, but he felt instinctively that her kindness was not for him.

"You don't have to be nice to me, you know," he said, feeling irritatingly pathetic. "No one is. There's no reason to be."

"I'm not surprised, with a name like Draco Malfoy." She was smiling faintly. "It's the name of a pantomime villain."

The name of a villain: how close to the truth she was! How could he have been anything but a villain with a name like Malfoy?

"But don't flatter yourself. I didn't say I was going to be nice to you, I just asked you to sit down."

Her frankness forced his lips into a smirk and, almost without thinking, he accepted her offer and joined her by the side of the brook.

"So what are you doing here?" she asked.

"Just walking," he answered. "I needed to get away from the house for a while." The words fell automatically from his lips, and it was not until he had said them that he thought twice. He had effectively just made an admission of weakness to a complete stranger, allowed his stony facade to drop momentarily. But the Malfoy mentality seemed very distant now: instead, he was struck by a remarkable sense of freedom. This muggle, Celia, had no idea of his status or his power, was blissfully unaware that he could have ended her life in an instant – but equally, she didn't know of his reputation for arrogance or cruelty, or of his involvement in a plot to murder a great man. This knowledge was strangely invigorating.

"I know what you mean," she said, nodding in understanding. "It's stifling sometimes. I came out here rather than sitting at the kitchen table while mum eats her grapefruit segments and dad reads the _Financial Times_ with as much ostentation as he can muster. It's all so tedious."

"Yeah," he said vaguely. The scene she had described seemed, to him, pleasingly ordinary. There was no murder casting a shadow over that breakfast table.

"So you live up at the manor?"

"That's right."

"What's it like to live in such a big house?" The question seemed somewhat naive.

"Quiet. Echoey. Cold, even on warm days. And it's lonely, if you're the sensitive type."

"Which of course you're not." There was a hint of sarcasm in her tone that prompted him to cast her a dark glance, eyes narrowed. "I must admit, you do come across as a bit of a self-dramatising prig at first, striding down here in your black suit like you've come straight from an funeral."

He frowned slightly, but attempted to ignore her infuriatingly knowing smile. "Perhaps I have a very good reason to be."

"But you claimed to be fine only a minute ago."

"Well, what was I supposed to say? Did you expect me to tell you all my hopes and fears at once?" Besides, he had always been tempted to indulge his taste for self-dramatisation. If he had been forced into the role of the tortured, lonely teenager, he might as well look like he meant it.

"I don't know what I expected," Celia confessed, but she was watching him in interest. "So what is your excuse for being so funereal?"

"You wouldn't believe me, even if I did tell you." His habitual superior smirk flickered across his features. The very thought of talking to a muggle about the Dark Lord's plans for his future was comical.

"It can't do any harm to tell me, then, can it?"

He cast her a sidelong glance. "Why are you so interested?"

"I'm just nosy, really, nosy about the mysterious family from the big house." She paused, fidgeting somewhat awkwardly with her shoelaces. "People in the village have always wondered what goes on behind that high hedge of yours, why you never mix with people..."

"My father doesn't like us to mix with people like you."

She raised an eyebrow, and he realised that it was probably rude to have said this so frankly.

"Why? Are we too common for you?" Now her voice had a defensive, harsh edge to it.

"It's not that." How could he possibly explain? "We're just not like you."

"So you think you're better than us?"

He'd already offended her: he might as well carry on truthfully. "Yes, actually." He couldn't tell whether she looked more hurt or shocked, and suspected that any chance of a pleasant conversation had long since passed.

"On what grounds?"

"What?"

"You must have a reason for thinking you're better than me."

"Of course I do." She watched him expectantly, but he hesitated: how to tell a muggle about the importance of pure blood? "Well..." He avoided her eyes, feeling vaguely angry with himself. He didn't have to do this, didn't have to explain his superiority to someone with no magical blood; but there was a part of him that wanted to explain it, that wanted to make sense of the mess he was in.

"Imagine that there is a group of people who have access to a remarkable bank of knowledge that ordinary people cannot dream of, but who have to keep this knowledge secret."

"Is this a religious thing?"

"No, but it's along the same lines. Anyway, my family is one of the oldest to possess this knowledge. We talk about it in terms of blood, and we're pure bloods. You, and the billions of others like you, are ordinary. We call you..." _Mudbloods_, his instinct said. "Muggles."

"Muggles," she repeated. She looked mildly incredulous, but she wasn't laughing. Growing in confidence, he ploughed on.

"There are some of the people like me who believe in sharing our knowledge with the muggles who seem to show an aptitude for it, so pure bloodlines have begun to be weakened by mixing with people of lesser blood. My family is one of several to oppose this. Years ago, before I was born, a... a man came to prominence who believed in the superiority of people like us. In him, we had a leader who could reassert out dominance. His route to power was halted temporarily, but now he's back, and there's no one to stand in his way this time. Soon, muggles will be put in their rightful place: beneath us." He paused: that was his father's version of events, at least. Spoken here, opposite Celia on a sunny morning, it seemed somewhat medieval.

She was staring at him, her wide eyes betraying mingled confusion and concern.

"I feel like I should be laughing," she said, "but you seem worryingly sincere."

"Oh, I'm completely sincere. Even though you probably think I'm deranged."

She shuffled uncomfortably. "I don't know what to think. It all sounds like some sort of scary cult."

"Maybe it is. That was the story I was brought up on. It has defined my family's every act. I've been taught to believe that mudbloods like you are little more than bestial, and I've never doubted it."

"Really?"

He hesitated: there had been moments of doubt. He had hardly been able to escape from them last year at school, least of all when it mattered most. He could still see Dumbledore at the top of the Astronomy Tower, arms spread beseechingly...

"Do you really believe that?" Celia's cautiously quiet voice cut through his memory.

"I told you – I always have." He paused. "But everything's changing now. It's becoming increasingly necessary to display unfailing loyalty to the cause, and I –" Why was he telling her this? He had never told anyone this before. He swallowed awkwardly. "I'm just not sure that it's a cause worth dying for."

His words lingered brightly, hanging in the air like a spell. They seemed to have been spoken by a voice other than his.

"Worth dying for?" his muggle companion repeated.

"Or worth killing for."

A heavy silence followed this revelation. Celia regarded him now with undisguised fear.

"Do you mean that this is quite literally a matter of life and death?"

"Very much so, yes." Did she believe him? He couldn't tell, but she was certainly absorbed.

"So..." She cleared her throat nervously. "So... have people you know been involved in murder?"

"On numerous occasions, yes."

She rose sharply to her feet, catching him by surprise: it must have been the casual manner in which he had spoken of killing.

"I don't want to hear any more of this," she said.

He, too, rose from the ground as she made to leave, knowing with a strange certainty that he had to make her stay. "I'm not a killer," he promised. She turned slowly on the spot and looked at him searchingly for a few moments.

"I don't know what you are," she said, "but I know that your strange little cult is not something I want to get involved in."

"Celia, please." She held his gaze – mildly surprised, perhaps – as he used her name for the first time. "I can't remember the last time I spoke to someone like this. Please hear me out, just for a few minutes more." He'd gone so far now that he needed to finish his account: he needed to explain everything, to prove that everything could be explained.

"I'm not some sort of psychiatrist," she reminded him.

"I don't even know what one of those is. I just need someone to listen to me. If it's any help, I'll have to wipe your memory anyway: I've already said too much."

"Wipe my _memory_?"

"It's completely pain-free. It's a spell I've used plenty of times before."

"What, are you some kind of magician?"

"Wizard," he corrected. Her disbelieving, slightly supercilious expression did not shift. "You think I'm mad, don't you?"

"I think you're completely deluded."

"So indulge my delusions for a little while longer. Please. If I'd wanted to harm you, I could have done so long before now."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" He didn't answer, but gave her an unerring, pleading look, and curiosity soon overcame her fears. "Fine," she relented, and they retook their former seats on the ground.

"Last year," he began, "the Dark Lord gave me the task of killing his greatest rival. The plan was very carefully laid; I spent months preparing for it. But when the moment came, when I'd disarmed him, I looked him in the eye and couldn't kill him. He and I both knew that I wouldn't do it. The horror and humiliation of those few seconds was more than you can possibly imagine. One of the others finished the job, but I had failed. The Malfoy name lost what honour it had left and my father will never forgive me."

"But wouldn't you rather have it like that than kill an innocent man?" Celia asked, darkly fascinated.

"That is the question I have asked myself ever since. But I have pledged my loyalty to my master and there is no going back. There can be no moral qualms, only complete obedience – or death."

"There must be some way to get out of it, to change sides..."

"Change sides? So you would suggest that I abandon my parents, disregard my ancestry and break my word of honour?"

"There's no harm in admitting that you've made a mistake. It's better to swallow your pride than follow the wrong path for the sake of stubbornness."

"But that's just the thing: I'm not sure that I am taking the wrong path. The other option would be to side with people and beliefs that I reject whole-heartedly."

She frowned, perplexed. "And you're sure that there isn't room for neutrality here?"

He smiled grimly. "If only there was. All I want is to be left to my own devices."

"So to summarise: you have to make a choice. On the one hand, your family and heritage, but also a leader who expects you to commit murder in his name. On the other, a system of beliefs to which you could under no circumstances subscribe."

"That's right."

"Why not?"

"The other side consists of mudbloods, half-bloods and their friends: all the supporters and followers of the man I famously failed to kill." He paused, and his frown deepened. "And at the heart of it all is Harry Potter, my lifelong enemy. I despise everything that he represents."

His companion let out an exasperated sigh. "So it does just come down to pride."

"It doesn't!"

"You don't want to change sides because you can't face making up with this Harry guy..."

"You're over-simplifying things grossly."

"Am I?"

"You've got no idea what you're talking about."

"If you don't want to hear what I think, you shouldn't have asked me to listen."

A despairing sigh escaped from his lips. He fervently wished that he could make her understand. He wasn't weak or blinded by pride, but truly was facing a vital question to which there was no answer.

"I know that I have many flaws and failings," he confessed. "I know that I can be arrogant and cowardly and cruel. But I'm not blind. I've thought about this carefully, and I can't see any option other than to bear the shame and follow my parents."

"Do you love your parents?" she asked after a moment's intrigued hesitation.

"Yes." The answer came without any pause for thought. "I know that they have risked everything for me, and I owe them at least as much again."

"Then you'll just have to trust that they will see you through."

They lapsed into silence. Draco felt strangely invigorated, strangely determined, as if by simply giving voice to these thoughts, he had steeled himself for the days to come.

Celia was watching him thoughtfully, all traces of fear erased from her countenance. "Are you going to wipe my memory now?"

"I thought you didn't believe that I could."

"I know it's impossible." She met his eyes shyly. "But there's a small part of me that wants to believe every word you've said."

Before he could think better of it, he pulled out his wand and performed the effortlessly familiar motion of a levitation spell. The dead leaves on the ground around them leapt into the air and twirled round her in an elegant and vibrant dance. Celia was utterly transfixed: her eyes, wider than ever, shone with awe and delight.

"That's magic," he said as the leaves settled gently back on to the ground.

"It's beautiful."

"It can be, yes."

"But I won't remember it."

His reply seemed to stick in his throat. "No. No, you won't."

"And what if I want to remember it?" He had known that this would come. Their eyes met, but he soon quailed under the unabashed longing in her glance.

"That's impossible. I shouldn't have told you all that I have, and I definitely shouldn't have performed magic in front of you."

"I won't tell anyone."

"I can't be sure of that."

"Don't you trust me?" Still, he avoided her eyes. "And wouldn't you like to have someone to talk to occasionally?"

"But you're a mudblood – a muggle!"

"If you couldn't put your whole faith in that when there was someone's life depending on it, why cling so desperately to it now?"

At last, he allowed his gaze to flow into hers and considered all that she was offering. He would have a friend, a companion, something to root him firmly in normality while everything else was being thrown up in the air: in short, something he had never had before.

"Please don't make me forget this morning," she asked, her voice so low that it was almost beyond hearing. "I don't want to forget this. I don't want to forget you."

"I know."

It was impossible – impossible. He repeated the words to himself again and again. But was it? Would it really be so terrible to have a shoulder – metaphorically, of course – to lean on? He could always see how it went at first then erase her memories of him later...

"Ah, Draco. There you are."

He leapt to his feet and spun round, but knew before he had even done so that his father was standing behind him.

"Hello, father."

But Lucius Malfoy's weren't on his son. He was watching Celia, who had risen to her feet along with Draco.

"A new friend?" he asked.

Draco said nothing. With each smooth, drawling vowel, that hated but not unfamiliar weight of reluctant duty and loyalty settled upon him. He had allowed himself to dream for a moment, and now the moment was gone.

"I'm Celia Russell," his erstwhile companion said, stepping forwards with a half-hearted smile, clearly not feeling as bold as she tried to sound. She extended a hand cordially, which Lucius' eyes drifted over lazily, but he did not shake it.

"Charming," he said simply, his icily polite tone laced with disgust. "Draco, you and I will be having a little chat once we've returned to the house. Now, you will ensure that this person never tries to speak to you again. You know the spell."

Nodding reluctantly, Draco raised his wand until it was aimed at the centre of Celia's forehead. She remained silent, but her eyes betrayed fear and disappointment. "Don't," she seemed to say. "Please, don't." She had been kind and patient when no one else was, and for the sake of their short-lived companionship, he risked a word for which he knew he would be punished later.

"Sorry."

"Do it now," his father said sharply. "Come, Draco."

He gripped his wand tightly, feeling it growing sticky beneath his clammy fingers. Celia was looking at him so fervently, her eyes shining –

"Obliviate."

* * *

><p>AN: Thank you for reading, and for persevering with what turned out to be a surprisingly long little story. Any thoughts? Please leave me a review and I'll read them with interest.


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